Government and Opposition

Professor Gary Hawke, Head of the School of Government, Victoria
University of Wellington, examines changes in our political system.

There
is a tradition of thinking that asserts that ideas change with the passing
of generations rather than with changes of mind. Public opinion changes
as generations die off and are replaced by younger people with equally
fixed but different ideas. It is an exaggeration, but it has some basis.

Our political system has been one of mixed member-proportional representation
for more than half a decade, but many people still think in terms of
the first-past-the-post electoral system. It existed for most of the
lifetimes of most of the current electorate, and contrary to what political
junkies think, most people are concerned with politics only when their
interests are directly affected – occasionally and usually ephemerally.
So traditional thinking persists.

Cabinet was supreme

The former system could reasonably be described as dictatorship with
occasional assassination by elections. We elected Parliaments and once
the result was known and the winning party elected a Cabinet, Parliament
was only occasionally significant. Cabinet was supreme, until it lost
an election. That is an exaggeration – future Ministers could
make their reputations in Parliament and the public regard for the Cabinet
was
affected by proceedings in Parliament – but it is not a caricature.

MMP made a difference. Elections now determine the composition of Parliament
but no longer have as direct an effect on the nature of the Executive.
Those who felt betrayed by the negotiations which followed the 1996
election and gave them a government different from what they thought
they voted for had not understood the logic of MMP. Parliament is now
more genuinely representative, and citizens' monitoring of the executive
is indirect rather than direct.

If we really wanted direct control, we would have frequent referenda – and
modern information and communications technology make that possible.

But most of us do not want to spend our time and effort getting on top
of the kind of issues that need determination in Parliament. We want
agents to do that for us. Deliberative government is likely to be more
informed than direct democracy – whatever public opinion polls
say about the public regard for Members of Parliament.

MPs who understand diversity

This is not to say that the kind of person we elect to be an MP is
likely to have the skills to analyse proposals and make wise choices
on behalf of the wider public. The demands by lobby groups and the media
for specific policy positions from political parties are an anachronistic
echo from the former electoral system. Even then MPs were likely to
be required to adjudicate on issues not foreseen at the time of an election.
Now nobody can foresee the policy agenda because it depends on what
Executive emerges from intra-parliamentary negotiations after an election – and
the earlier limitations on the ability to forecast events is compounded.

MMP therefore calls for MPs who understand the enormous diversity of
values, interests and aspirations in our society and who can engage
in debate and discussion and assess proposed collective decisions for
the extent to which they attract support from within that society. The
formulation of options rests much more with professional policy analysts
than with MPs or political parties. Implementation of Executive decisions
which attract parliamentary endorsement are also matters for professionals
rather than politicians.

Both our political and our policy processes are directed towards collective
decision-making. They are not a giant lolly-scramble in which groups
contest for 'resources' which somehow come at the expense of nobody.
Government is shifting control over resources from some people to others,
and that requires both good understanding of social values and professional
processes of policy design and implementation.

We are now more ambitious for our collective decision-making than previously.
Modern technology makes it possible to deal with individuals rather
than only with very crudely defined groups. We want to deal with the
much greater diversity that is now characteristic of society.

Rather than any deterioration of capability, there is now dissatisfaction
with the performance of the public sector. There is no answer to that
position other than increased capability – and that is a fundamental
purpose of the School of Government along with its ability to discern
changes in our political and policy processes and to disseminate understanding
of them more quickly than is achieved by the passing of generations.

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G.R. Hawke (ed) Changing Politics? The Electoral Referendum, 1993 (Wellington:
IPS, 1993) is relevant to understanding how our government system has
changed.